More Users are Running Cyanogen on their Phones than Blackberry and Windows Phone Combined

In what is an astonishing story, Cyanogen boasts of a larger user base than BlackBerry and Windows Phone combined. It is no secret that behind Android and iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry are the largest players in the world of smartphones. Combined, the two of them boast of a 3% market share, out of which Windows Phone contributes to 2.7% while Blackberry is at miser .3%, according to the latest IDC report of Q1 2015. Cyanogen started off as a community of developers who released ROMs for devices which allowed users to do more with their Android phones. Over the years, their popularity has grown and from a pure fun and frolic part time project, it has grown into a full size funded startup.

A photo posted by Cyanogen (@cyanogen_official) on Aug 8, 2015 at 10:02am PDT

Speaking at the Code Rush conference at Seattle, Adnan B of Cyanogen revealed that they boast of more than 50 million users which puts them a shade above both Windows Phone and Blackberry combined. It is a major achievement for Cyanogen given that they are not even a complete platform in themselves. CyanogenMod is a layer of skin that is built over stock Android which is part reason for their popularity given they add on to the stock Android experience without hampering the experience and a drastically different visuals. Thanks to their strong Theme Engine and support from the developer community, CyanogenMod allows users to change whichever aspect of their phone as they please.

Recently, Cyanogen has teamed up with OEMs like Yu and OnePlus which has allowed them to pre-load CM on their smartphones giving the team a lot more exposure. While the breakup with OnePlus was ugly and fairly public, a series of fundings as well as ongoing talks with several Chinese vendors to pre-install CyanogenMod on their devices means that things are looking better each day for the team at Cyanogen.

There is no quashing of the possibility that Cyanogen could even break away from Android in the coming years and maybe come up with a platform of their own. If they do decide to do that sometime in the future, one thing is for certain that Cyanogen will have an extremely strong user base even to start off with.